The ability to own is a powerful feeling, and letting your employees own something that is yours or the company can be a great way for creating unflinching loyalty. Not only does it boost morale and acceptance, but it makes them be a part of the company. By letting employees own something small like your personal pen, to a brand new high tech laptop, they are more willingly to endure with you to the end.
Offering company stocks as bonuses can also be a good motivator and promote acceptance for the employees. Stocks let them own a piece of the company and their hard work will be paid off as the stock price go up. If you let your employees invest in the company, the bond becomes stronger between company and employees. Letting people own something is psychologically powerful because it means they are accepted through their hard work and effort. To own is to be a master of, so who doesn’t want to own?
8 Comments
I totally agree David. If a business/company you work for gives you something (eg: business cards, pen, laptop, etc…) it’s certainly an incentive and promotes the idea that you are part of the team and your role is being valued. By giving away even smaller items, companies should not underestimate how powerful such a gesture can be in giving people encouragement.
Those little gestures is a first step to building trust and loyalty
I think it pretty much depends on the situation. I have been contemplating something along this lines for a long time (without giving away part of the company
), but unfortunately nothing works here, only money. And no matter what increase and how much money people get, they still look elsewhere for greener grass. Reality of life 
Some companies have been calling their staffs ‘associates’ and ‘partners’. That’s a great way to give a part of the company to them without actually giving anything
Biz- Either the company is doing something wrong or it is the employees!
Zedd- Very shrewd indeed but some would want more beside a better title
… bit of both I would say
Biz and Zedd, I think you miss the point. To get the kind of loyalty and commitment you want from your people, to make them feel part of the team, you do have to actually give them something, and equity is imho the most meaningful thing you can give.
Fortunately, you can divide equity into very small pieces, and they’ll still mean a lot to your folks — especially if their commitment grows the company into the next level.
Think of it this way: If you set up a stock-option pool of a total of 5% of the company for all of them, you haven’t given up very much. You still have 95%. But if the market cap grows to $100 million, their equity is now $5 million — you’ve made them rich.
If you set that up now, with rules about vesting and performance benchmarks (I’m not a lawyer, but I do have a client in the employee-improvement industry), they have something to work toward, and you should see everyone pulling together in a whole new way.
Then, with that in place, if you’re still not getting outstanding performance out of them, you’ve either got a training problem or a communication problem: they don’t know what’s expected or they don’t know how to get from current performance to expected performance.
Great analysis there Mary